I used to spend way too much time hunting down YAML indentation errors and squinting at messy CSVs. Over the last few months, I’ve refined my toolkit to stop the "busy work" so I can focus on actual engineering.
Here are the 3 tools I’m genuinely relying on right now:
YAML by RedHat (VS Code) Honestly, if you're touching K8s or GitHub Actions without this, you're living dangerously. It’s saved me from at least a dozen "failed to parse" deploy errors this week alone.
Rainbow CSV (VS Code) In Data Eng, we deal with a lot of "quick looks" at data. Opening a 50MB CSV in Excel is a nightmare. This extension makes the raw text readable in seconds by color-coding columns. Simple, but a massive time-saver.
Wappalyzer (Chrome) My "security curiosity" tool. Whenever I see a smooth-running site, I want to know what’s under the hood. It’s great for seeing how other teams are layering their security and frontend stacks.
My rule of thumb: If a tool doesn't save me at least 15 minutes a week, I uninstall it. Keep the stack lean.
What’s one tool that actually lives up to the hype for you? Drop a recommendation below! 👇
Top comments (1)
I’m curious—does anyone else have a 'love-hate' relationship with YAML? It’s powerful, but one wrong space and the whole pipeline screams at you. 😅 What’s your biggest workflow pet peeve?